


Alien World. Predators.

by DeeLatener



Series: Alien World. Predators. [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Half-Blood, Humiliation, M/M, Oral Sex, Racing, Rape/Non-con References, Science Fiction, Sex Toys, Sounding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:58:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeeLatener/pseuds/DeeLatener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story was started by Hephaestion (Tion Aminthor) many years ago. It was orphaned but once again started with me as co-author.</p><p>This concrete story is a part of a bigger one that includes many events before the incidents described in it and many after. ‘Alien World’ is a novel written exclusively for its authors’ pleasure and it contains some episodes purely because the authors wanted so.</p><p>Aste is a handsome boy with ash-blonde hair and striking blue-grey eyes but he also is a half-blood, which means being an outcast in the world ruled by the Superior, a race that controls and uses lowers humans. An unexpected meeting Aste has with a distinguished Superior leaves him in turmoil of feelings but little he knows what a powerful and frightening man his new acquaintance is…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alien World. Predators.

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Чужой мир. Хищники](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/20566) by Hephaestion (Tion), DeeLatener. 



> This chapter translated by Juxian Tang

**Chapter I. Half-blood.**

 

…On the highway a bike cut in front of him.  
The Colonel Anari Monso, special division of His Majesty Supreme Monarch’s Life Guard, smoothly pressed down on the brake pedal not to catch the rear wheel of the bike with the bumper.  
The bike disappeared, in a growl of accelerating, but the Colonel had enough time to scan him. No danger, his sub-consciousness informed him.  
Chasing after the ill-started racer to punish him was not something the Colonel felt like doing. Several minutes later the little accident slipped out of his mind completely.  
In the loudspeakers a pleasant voice accompanied with rhythmic music sang about the sunrise, about a new life beginning. The Colonel’s fingers tapped in sync with the rhythm unconsciously.  
Anari barely looked around, he was not in a hurry, driving in one of the middle rows and relishing the phenomenon of nature described in the song. The sky, pink, reflected in the ‘skewers’ of skyscrapers and overwhelming mass of super glass of office buildings. The city moved on every one of its levels but the highway was almost empty.  
A part of his consciousness the Colonel diligently allocated for scanning the surroundings, giving himself up to contemplation at the same time.  
The sedan dived under the cross bridge towering over the highway at the height of eighty meters. The place was quite a narrow one for switching to the fly mode and quite a convenient one for placing a bomb. If someone set a bomb under the bridge, an explosion, even a moderate one, would inflict a rather unpleasant damage; there would be no time to block it.  
Well, it could only concern a primitive device. It was not possible to bring a high-tech bomb in here but a self-made one, yes.  
The orientation for possible acts of terror had been carried out lately. So far it announced preventive measures of increased control.  
The news followed with a weather report - rain tonight - and information on the arrival of a trade delegation from Telymar, which was likely to become the cause of possible terrorist attacks.  
Right in front of the sedan the biker appeared again. The very same one.  
Now Anari scanned him more carefully. Something was strange – not dangerous but… incomprehensible, unexplainable. Anari couldn’t interpret what he sensed.  
A few minutes later the bike materialized on the right. It blinked with its headlight and shot by, rising on the rear wheel.  
‘What a fool,’ Monso smirked.  
The stranger clearly was baiting him - spinning around, sometimes distancing himself, sometimes slowing down, waiting.  
‘Want me to chase you?’ The Colonel was amused. It was going to be particularly intriguing to look at the face of this specimen when he finally got what he deserved. The fool should be taught a lesson, for later times.  
Anari switched to manual control fully, taking the challenge. The biker, seeing that his invitation was accepted, happily charged along the speedway, swaying between cars, causing them to start a signaling cacophony.  
The Colonel followed the figure with his eyes, his lips curving in a smile. It was a wonder no one had run over the madman yet, with his half-baked manner of driving.  
Anari scanned him again. No, he wasn’t a terrorist. Just an idiot.  
The bike and the car raced into the sunrise, sometimes parting for a while to skirt the middle rows, sometimes joining each other in the same line, tagging along.  
The game was amusing – unobtrusive, helping to keep up the necessary level of adrenaline.  
The bike left the speedway and disappeared.  
Anari Monso scanned the surroundings and quickly found the runaway.  
‘Do you think you can tease me and leave?’ The Colonel’s eyes flashed steel.  
The sedan barely fit in a turn, changing rows for an exit.  
The Colonel slowly entered a lane, so narrow that the walls of the houses nearly scratched the car’s ‘cheeks’. The bike was there, in the dead-end. And its owner stood next to it.  
The biker was quite tall but still reached the Colonel’s collarbones only. Then he removed the helmet.  
Anari knew that the biker who had been baiting him was a half-blood. But the emanation of power he felt while scanning was impossible for a half-blood and somewhat confusing. Unheard of for this crossbreed of the Race and the Inferior.  
The Inferior race did have some undeveloped abilities – opposite to those intrinsic to any member of the Superior. But half-bloods had none.  
The kid was smiling.  
“Hey, wanna fuck me?” he asked directly.  
Anari raised an eyebrow. The Colonel happened to get such kind of proposals from time to time but it had never taken place in a lane. And it had never come from a half-blood.  
Half-bloods feared him, probably on a subconscious level, scuttling out of the reach of his possible ‘radar’ like mice. No one who didn’t belong to the Race dared make such an offer to a chastener.  
But the tall boy stared at him openly, tossing away his ash-blonde straight hair from his face and smiling. Smiling alluringly.  
The Colonel didn’t sense any fear.  
‘Brave like a fool,’ he thought briefly.  
“Why not?” he grinned. “Do you know who I am?”  
The kid jerked up his chin in defiance.  
“You’re a cool guy with a cool car,” he gave an explanation to his behavior; and at the next moment he walked up to the Colonel, with his thumbs hooked behind his belt and a wide smile on his face.  
Looking up at Anari, he slipped down on his knees and grabbed Anari’s buckle.  
Monso swatted the boy’s hand away and unfastened himself, discreetly pressing the button that switched off the defense. Heavy leather of the belt hit the ground raising the dust.  
The kid unzipped the pants of the Colonel and touched his flaccid member, running his fingers over it, pulling the skin. Looking at the object of his desire, he licked his lips and took the head into his mouth, screwing up his eyes and sucking on the tip of the Colonel’s penis unhurriedly.  
The Colonel felt the kid enjoy it. The half-blood moved his lips slowly, clamping them around the head, barely caressing the stem. His tongue pressed against the skin tightly, teasing the urethra.  
Anari looked down at the bobbing ash-blonde head. The kid was not bad, and his efforts and – even more important – his willingness to do what he was doing added to sensations.  
The Colonel started pushing his thighs forward slightly.  
The kid glanced up quickly, without letting out the Colonel’s impressive cock. He parted his lips, showing the head lolled on his tongue and lowered his head again, returning to the interrupted activity.  
Feeling that the Colonel’s cock grew weightier, the kid took it a bit deeper, but the thick stem could barely pass between his lips.  
The Colonel put his heavy palm onto the fair head and pressed, making the kid take it deeper.  
The half-blood slurped a drop that appeared on the tip and started moving the skin of the cock up and down with his hand, unable to swallow further. With his free hand he fished a tube of cheap lubricant out of his pocket.  
Letting go the Colonel’s member, quite wet with his spittle, the kid squeezed out a significant amount of lube on his palm and jerked off the Colonel spreading the grease.  
Then he got up and walked to Anari’s car where he turned his back to the Colonel, raised his jacket and quickly dropped his pants. Another portion of lube – and the kid, arching shamelessly, supporting himself with his free hand against the hood of the car, smeared the cleft between his buttocks.  
Turning back to the Colonel, he smiled again and smacked his own backside.  
Anari leaned against a concrete wall of the narrow lane, so crowded with the shells of balconies that one could barely see the sky, and watched the insolent kid without moving. These sensations were new and the Colonel enjoyed them. So far no half-blood or Inferior dared tease him like that.  
The kid had asked for this meeting, first exciting the Colonel with race adrenaline, making Anari appreciate him as a passable driver, and now he wanted a logical culmination of this thrill – sex. It was logical for Superiors, for Anari – but not for Inferiors, native inhabitants of the Planet. It seemed Inferiors hadn’t known a thing about carnal delights, with their ridiculous moral – it was a wonder they hadn’t become extinct. Half-bloods, the crossbreeds of two races, were shunned by both; Inferiors considered them corrupt and depraved, and Superiors perceived them as a part of Inferior race. Half-bloods didn’t stick with the cult of celibacy of Infers and didn’t have the powers of Supers; they just lived wary of both races.  
The kid obviously was not going to become extinct. His slim, even skinny backside looked quite attractive against the silver hood of the sedan. The kid was handsome and knew it. Beauty was a rare commodity among half-bloods.  
An unusual kid; and unusually smug.  
Anari listened to himself but his instincts steadily refused to signal of any danger. There were only fluids of lust, a clear evidence of the kid’s sincerity.  
The boy’s ass rose even higher in impatience, almost wagged in invitation. The kid plainly couldn’t understand why the ‘cool guy with a cool car’ hadn’t already started fucking him, as anyone in his place would have done. Unless that ‘anyone’ were too squeamish. But Inferiors were not squeamish and the half-blood obviously hadn’t ever dealt with Superiors.  
And this Superior, a fascinating guy who’d just chased him with such self-abandonment, was pretty aroused now, judging on his quite a considerable erection; would he even refuse?  
The Colonel kept standing at the wall, for unknown reason, still at the same point where the kid had sucked him, and kept watching, without paying attention to his cock sticking out of his fly like a spear.  
“Hey, what’re ya waiting for?”  
‘Are you afraid?’ It was unsaid but Anari practically could hear the taunt in the kid’s broken, slightly hoarse voice.  
The Colonel had learned to ignore taunts during his second year in the Academy. It was a part of education but not everyone mustered it in the end.  
The half-blood missed the next movement. The man suddenly was right next to him, and the kid flinched but Anari still didn’t feel any fear from him. The Colonel’s palm pressed on the kid’s spine making him arch even more, sticking out his ass like a whore. The other hand joined, pulling the kid’s buttock aside. Strong fingers slammed deeply into the hole, expanding it. The kid shuddered with abrupt intrusion. Anari habitually prepared to hold onto him while squeezing inside the tight ass but suddenly the half-blood exhaled deeply and relaxed letting the fingers pass into his tunnel.  
The Colonel grinned in content and pushed in a couple of times, then pulled out his fingers from the wet, prudently lubricated hole and directed his cock into it.  
Only the head of the huge penis entered and the kid swayed his hips, moaning in pain, but the man was not going to stop. His palms wrapped around the kid’s narrow hips, and he yanked the kid’s ass onto his cock, entering him in one lingering motion.  
The kid gave out a moan, loud and pitiful. His fingers scraped over the shining polished surface of the hood.  
‘Now you know your lesson started,’ Monso thought in satisfaction, halting, enjoying the agonized fluttering of the muscles. He could have moved – lightly, helping the kid to relax and switch to different sensations. But the Colonel didn’t, desiring to get his due from the cheeky bastard in full.  
Anari heard the kid’s convulsive exhales: the boy tried to get accustomed and stopped struggling, made an effort willing his muscles to relax. The Colonel used the moment to drive in farther, causing another painful spasm. He froze watching the kid who trembled in new pain, just after he’d worked so hard to get used to the previous one.  
The buttocks tried to clamp, and Anari pulled them apart, running his palms over the kid’s thighs, digging his fingers into the skinny flesh, leaving crimson stains. He watched the skin of his cock. It seemed so thin, like a membrane of a frog leg. The massive phallus looked like a tight jam, stretching the kid’s ass to the point of tearing.  
“Please,” the kid breathed out, bumping his head against the hood, shivering hugely.  
Usually Anari moved devastatingly at such moments. Usually he wouldn’t even listen to the words of a worthless half-blood, would fuck him so cruelly that it would hurt even to look at the kid’s hole afterwards.  
But he didn’t want to do it this way now.  
This upstart had teased him on the highway, had offered himself voluntarily, sincerely, without fear. It seemed strange, incomprehensible – and therefore, titillating. Anari made up his mind: he’d play with the boy for a little more, to see what he was capable of.  
‘Stupid but brave.’  
The Colonel drove out the kid’s body. The muscles of the boy’s rectum pushed out the head of the Colonel’s cock happily - and clamped, obviously not intent on letting it in again.  
The boy exhaled in relief, clearly thinking that it was all over and he was the winner.  
He lay on the hood, unmoving, coming round.  
The man raised his belt from the ground and took out a capsule of trisorbent ointment, opened it. The ointment leaked over his cock like thick syrup, coating it in a film of oil. There was much more lubricant than the visible size of the capsule suggested, and yet it was not used up.  
This field remedy had many uses: it could serve for freezing some organic parts to preserve their composition and DNA; it was also possible to coat oneself with it to avoid congelation in extreme conditions and in absence of other sources of heat; it could be used as an ingredient of a self-made explosive device if necessary. Or one could use it like that: in a back alley of the megalopolis, to smear the ass of a brazen kid to ease the intrusion.  
‘You’re a lucky one, Aste,’ the boy thought. ‘It’s sheer luck the guy backed off as soon as you begged. Any other one would fuck you bloody, you wouldn’t be able to sit for days.’  
His obliging sub-consciousness was berating him now for the things it had caused by itself.  
That entire thing was not quite explainable. For him, a half-blood, it was not the most frequent thing: to jump some stranger’s bones. Sometimes he might tease a man, without fear to get in trouble. His mother had said once that his instinct of self-preservation was absent and he wouldn’t live long. When he asked what’s wrong with him, she kept silent and then begged him to be more careful.  
His flirting had never concerned Superiors before. Even though his mother blamed his instincts, he had never made advances on the members of the Race; usually he managed with his street buddies or workers from the workshop where he helped for a bit of money from time to time.  
He never got in trouble so far, not once. Those who tried to force him disappeared quickly for some reason. The kid didn’t quite understand why it happened this way.  
When he was a child – and even now – he thought there was a supreme being that protected him from all troubles. Getting older, Aste lost the faith into deities and divine punishment but he still believed in his personal keeper. Perhaps that was what made him different from other half-bloods.  
Today a strange thing happened to him. He was driving on the highway, his mind empty of thoughts. And then he saw, he sensed something that caught his attention like a magnet. A silver sedan, worth a whole village of slaves, and a man inside it, a man whose striking face caused Aste an almost painful heartbeat.  
Like a fly that flew to honey and got caught in it with all its paws – I’ll die but I’ll have it! – Aste started hovering around that stranger. He simply couldn’t do anything against this abnormal attraction. Everything inside him screamed: you have to make him notice you! You have to try!  
And now he was lying face down on that very sedan. Everything’s worked fine. But for some reason he didn’t feel any joy.  
His ass hurt like a bitch.  
When the man rose over him again, the half-blood shivered, this time in fear. He clearly thought everything was over even without really starting and now was happily sunbathing on the car’s hood, resting after the unexpected pain. The remnants of this pain still swam in the bottoms of his misted eyes. What the boy was thinking about, Anari didn’t know. He’d never met anyone so void of self-preservation instinct before.  
Feeling the hands that moved his buttocks apart, the boy struggled, trying to get off the hood. His back bared when his jacket rode up.  
The Colonel shrugged and yanked the half-blood back onto the hood. The kid hit his flank, still trying to wriggle out and getting entangled in his clothes.  
A frightened sob broke out of his throat.  
“Stop twitching.”  
Anari pressed the boy to the steel hood, holding his neck with one hand, and in one motion drove his thickly coated penis into a clamped opening.  
The boy jerked up, his thighs jolted. Now the Super felt his fear – but the movement simply hafted the half-blood onto the huge spear driving into his ass.  
“Don’t move. It’ll be better.”  
Anari didn’t know if his words reached the boy. The ointment he used for lubrication was also an analgesic that didn’t diminish sensitivity.  
At one point the Colonel felt: the boy knew resistance was futile. His struggling stopped, his trembling hips pressed to the hood. The kid sighed pitifully, resigning himself to the fate he’d brought onto himself.  
Ready to bear with it. And then, if he survived, he would lick his wounds and blame himself.  
Aste’s consciousness was in panic. It hadn’t ever happened to him. He always was the one who chose – with whom, how and to what extent. And now he couldn’t move. Pain drilled through his insides. It was really scary. The stranger was not going to let him go, slammed in his enormous dick again, to the very balls, as if intent on breaking through Aste’s breastbone. There was no barrier for him and couldn’t be. Because he was a Superior, used to taking.  
‘Stop fooling around,’ the kid tried to pull himself together, come round from pain shock. ‘You were begging for it. You teased him. And now, when you got what you wanted, you whine and tremble. What is he going to think of you? A coward and a cheap shit you are!’  
Aste bit his lip. His breath, sobbing from pain, still broke through but he tried hard and a few minutes later he was already exhaling loudly with his mouth open.  
The cock slid inside him, rubbing the walls. And suddenly the boy realized it was going in much easier than with his lubricant. His muscles were relaxing, as if going numb but still feeling the friction.  
Aste listened to himself. The pain didn’t leave altogether but the friction got easier. Another loud gasp turned into a moan. The kid stifled the unexpected sound.  
Anari noticed in surprise that the boy managed to relax again. An incredible thing for an Inferior, and for a half-blood, too. Anari used the lube in sex taking care of himself but he could never explain those strange beings that once they relaxed, the pain would go away. Well, truth to be told, he never even tried to explain. This strange boy who’d made a pass on him was the first one Anari talked to.  
Feeling that the lock of the muscles on his cock slackened, the man swayed, starting the motion.  
The ass under him was delightfully tight; he nearly could wrap his palms around it. He fucked the hole between the small round buttocks, and this hole clamped on him, making him wish to tear it, to make it loose, to make it stop slurping like a brothel whore’s.  
The Colonel moved his hips forward and then back, lingeringly slow, and heard the boy’s long moan, a moan of passion, not of pain. The hips of the half-blood under him followed his cock, as if the kid begged not to part with him. Anari repeated the motion in amazement and sensed an obvious reply: the half-blood pushed back, opening for him, wanting to keep connecting. There was no fear. This amazing being drank the starting pleasure, answering to it fearlessly even at the moment when probably the Death itself claimed him.  
“Fuuuck!” the boy moaned again. His head tilted up, and Anari saw a stripe of his forehead and wings of fair eyelashes.  
The kid stood with his legs far apart, tiptoeing, raising his backside, trying to get it even higher, which was not possible. His hands scrambled forward looking for support; the half-blood clearly was going to settle tighter on the slippery hood to participate more actively.  
Finally his fingers hooked at the edge at the front glass. The boy had to stretch forward to reach it. Anari yanked him up with a smirk, helping him, and the half-blood’s feet left the ground. The Colonel held his hips tightly, his hard palm pulling the kid closer in a desired rhythm.  
Anari saw the boy’s reflection in the smooth surface of the hood. Even though the mirror image was distorted, it was obvious the boy was on the verge. The arcs of his eyebrows revealed his pain but it was not pain alone. His bared teeth and his breath leaving a stain of perspiration on the polished surface witnessed the half-blood’s pleasure.  
The Colonel thought briefly if he should have pinched himself to check whether he was dreaming. Instead of it, he pinched the boy’s buttock forcefully, and then ran his fingernails over it, changing the sensations.  
The boy flinched slightly. His moans grew frequent and pitiful. He jerked back, scratching the hood with zippers and fastenings of his jacket. His hips slapped the metal, every deep insertion raised him up and then pulled down – making him struggle not to fall from the slippery surface.  
His fingers were losing their hold on the edge all the time and then the half-blood, whining, searched blindly in front of him, trying to find the point of support.  
Finally the boy stopped skimming his fingers over the metal in unsuccessful attempts to hold, the more so as the Colonel’s ramming didn’t let him do it, and reached for his own cock. When Anari noticed it, he raised the hips of the half-blood even higher and slammed into him under a different angle, the way that made his cock stretch the taut hole like a narrow condom and brushed against the prostate.  
The face in the shining surface distorted; the boy arched as if his body was seized with a convulsion. With his arms thrown apart and trembling and his dangling legs he reminded a frog on a lance of a scientist. The kid forgot his attempts to jerk off his cock; his head tilted up, his face almost upturned to Anari, and a long hoarse scream broke out of his throat. A scream of passion.  
It was the first time a half-blood or an Inferior screamed on the Colonel’s cock with pleasure.  
Grinning, Anari sent his cock in again, ramming into the prostate once more, then repeating it over and over.  
And every time the boy arched, convulsed uncontrollably and yelled.  
The boy stopped moving. His entire body seemed frozen; he was afraid to shift not to lose the sharp, agonizingly pleasant sensations. His head swam, his mind empty. He saw black that blossomed with bright sparkles from time to time.  
He felt that every lasting motion that rubbed his insides brought him closer to coming. This aching feeling was wearing him out.  
The Colonel didn’t hurry. He moved steadily, feeling that the boy enjoyed the fucking, afraid to move a finger, only groaning loudly and demandingly.  
Anari was intrigued. He froze, curving his eyebrow slightly, and watched, wondering what the little frog would do.  
His stopping destroyed the sweet web of the boy’s sensations. The half-blood started showing discontent half a minute later, when regained his breath and realized the moving inside him interrupted. He whined and worked his legs trying to find support, settling them on the grid of the radiator, scraping his knees.  
Anari slammed inside and froze again, with his cock half in.  
The boy shrieked loudly and went still, then moaned in disappointment.  
“Fuck… Come on… goddamn fuck me!”  
‘I’m fuckin’ gonna die!’ a thought flashed through Aste’s mind. His hips bucked.  
The Colonel stretched his lips in a snarl and yanked the kid towards himself, shoving his cock inside fully. The half-blood wheezed, jerking forward, trying to escape the piercing pain. Anari started fucking the damned hole in earnest.  
‘Come on, beg me to stop.’  
The Colonel pressed the kid to the cool metal and slammed into him, eliciting a moan or a cry with every blow. His cock banged into the prostate, rolled over it, pressured on the walls as if trying to rip them.  
The boy was wheezing with his mouth wide open and suddenly moaned pathetically, convulsing under the Superior. Anari felt spasms around his cock, so strong they didn’t let him move, and the Colonel had to push with his entire force to break through. The kid howled under him, writhing in orgasm based on pain and friction. Stains of his come smeared on the hood.  
Finally he went quiet, stopped moving at all, lay spread on the metal.  
Anari continued going on. The half-blood’s body in a crumpled t-shirt was riding the polished surface making it squeal.  
The boy didn’t react to the further fucking.  
Anari raised the tempo, then slowed down again, checking for reaction, and a few minutes later, feeling that his own peak was close, he moved lingeringly and rhythmically, leaving bruises on the skinny ass of the half-blood with his brutally digging fingers. But the boy seemed to be boneless. Deep powerful jabs given to him by the Colonel – the very same ones that several minutes ago made him jerk and wheeze in attempt to get off the agonizing spear – now had no effect at all, as if the boy’s hole was adjustable. Yet it was tight and narrow at the same time.  
Anari was fine with it. Before his peak he moved strongly and unsteadily, and Inferiors usually messed up with his sensations because couldn’t stand the size of the weapon that pierced them. Moans of pain and begging didn’t touch him, he pulled a victim onto his cock without caring of their state but the resistance that added to his excitement in the beginning was distracting in the end.  
The half-blood under him was delightfully pliant, at the same time squeezing the Colonel’s cock with a tight ring of his untorn, strong anus. The finale was close; Anari moved faster, and at last his body was flooded with orgasm. Stars flashed in his eyes as he felt a feather-light touch on the very edge of the sensation; a touch that no Inferior or half-blood could ever give him.  
For a moment his mind, clouded with pleasure, quickened in surprise but then the sensation was gone as if it’d never been here and didn’t appear again.  
Calming his breath, the man slipped out of the boy who continued to lie on the hood limply. Anari knew he wouldn’t be able to stand, would just fall into dust under the car, and tossed him up a little higher onto the hood.  
The Colonel zipped his pants, then grabbed his one-time lover by the belt, shook him into his trousers and settled against the bike. The boy didn’t stand; as soon as the man let him go, he slipped on the ground, with his back against the warm engine. His head, eyes closed, dropped onto his chest, breath even; it seemed the boy simply fell asleep.  
Anari stopped for a second, looking down at him, then tossed a ball of defense field that covered both the boy and the bike. When the kid came round, he would just get up and walk away. The Colonel suddenly caught himself thinking he didn’t want someone to use the fucked boy while he was unconscious.  
The man got into the car and the silver sedan left the lane.  
* * *  
Aste entered the workshop and walked to his box to change.  
“So, where were you yesterday?” Jade, an Inferior with scarred hands, called for him. He wiped dirt from his hands and walked up to the boy who was stripping hastily and now bounced on one foot, wriggling into the overalls.  
“Crashed,” the kid replied with a smirk.  
“Crashed. I see. We needed you. Too much work. And you hang around somewhere.”  
Aste glanced at the master in discontent. Everyone bossed him around here but none of them dared hit him, even though sometimes he skipped a day or two. They just withheld a certain amount from his trifling salary but at times he was willing to pay such a price.  
Like yesterday.  
The boy remembered coming round in twilight which meant he was out of it for almost ten hours. He felt sucked dry or like after a blood transfusion. Aste remembered getting up with difficulty; he figured out he wouldn’t be able to drive the bike, so he just walked dragging it along. A half-blood acquaintance on the truck stopped and offered to give him a lift.  
“I crashed, Jade, could barely walk home,” the kid repeated forcefully.  
“Fine, I don’t care. Get to the pit, M-600. Take a look at it.”  
Aste’s fingers moved choosing necessary tools, carrying out usual procedures but his thoughts were far away. A profile behind tinted glass, hands on his hips, exhausting tempo… He couldn’t think about anything else. And he didn’t want to.  
His previous ‘rendezvous’ could be just as spontaneous but none of them touched him so powerfully.  
‘It’s no use,’ Aste thought. ‘But… but he is with me, I can think about him. I stole him.’ The boy smiled and missed one of the bolts that shot right at his face.  
Jerking up his hand in defense Aste felt a strong hit on his wrist and the bolt fell down.  
‘Lucky me, could’ve lost an eye.’  
He thought that the supreme being kept him safe again and thanked it eagerly.  
Jade found the boy rubbing the lubricating oil over brake discs of the unfortunate M-600 with a delirious smile on a spaced face.  
“What the fuck are you doing?”  
He almost hit the boy in anger but as always his hand fell down a moment before a blow.  
Aste glared, snarling, but then looked at his hands and laughed realizing what he was doing. It’d never happened to him before. Perhaps that Super really sucked out his brain.  
“He’s laughin’,” Jade spat in irritation. “At seven the boss will be here, he said it has to be in perfect shape.”  
“No worries, I’ll do it,” Aste said and started wiping oil from the discs.  
As soon as he finished wiping the front glass, and it was quite after seven, a signal came through the halo-phone. The screen connected to the street camera revealed a car that entered the underground passage. A Superior clad in black, the boss’s security member, got out of the car and yelled:  
“Open up, assholes!”  
Jade turned to the boy:  
“Wait in the utility room.”  
Aste shrugged not knowing what caused this order but obeyed.  
A few moments later the room smelling with lubricant and metal was crowded by a huge red-haired guy accompanied with three of his body guard assistants. The man smoked a fat cigar holding it in his hairy fingers. There was a ring of polished ivory on his little finger.  
Jade bowed.  
“Everything’s ready, boss.”  
“I’ll check.”  
The man reached his hand; one of the assistants put a detector into it.  
The boss walked up to the car and pointed the detector at it scanning the diagnostic data, then showed it to one of his men.  
“See it? They really worked it up.” He smirked. “Who did it?” the red-haired man asked Jade, frowning. The master lowered his head, paused.  
“Who did it?” Crass yelled. “Hiring illegals again? Last time was not enough for you?”  
Jade nervously glanced at the scarred flesh of his hands. That last time he and his team of three people didn’t finish all orders in time, late for one hour. He was lucky he’d survived and even kept his job.  
How the boss could guess about an illegal worker, he couldn’t imagine. But it was too scary to lie.  
“Just a boy. An apprentice. We don’t pay him, he’s just learning, helping us…”  
“You let an apprentice touch my beauty? Oh well, Jade.” Crass’s face changed for a moment reflecting something like a smile; it made his eyes look like tiny bows, and then his face regained its coldness and arrogance.  
“Bring him here,” the boss said.  
Jade didn’t dare to argue, even though he flinched briefly knowing what it could mean for the boy.  
‘Especially since he’s a pretty one.’  
He stifled a heavy sigh and walked up to the door of the utility room.  
“Come out, the boss wants to see you.” He didn’t meet the eyes of the boy who sat leaning against the boxes at the wall.  
“Go. And don’t stare at him,” the usually irritated master added in whisper in reply to Aste’s surprised look. “Force save you…”  
A guarding sign turned into something indefinite when Jade realized the Super was watching them closely. When Crass saw Aste, his eyebrows jumped up.  
“Wow. What do we have here.”  
He walked around the boy who, following his master’s advice, stared in front of himself dumbly.  
“Look at me,” Crass ordered.  
Aste raised his blue-grey eyes with a dark rim in the irises.  
“Is this car your work?”  
“Yeah,” Aste said. Crass openly gawked at him until he got tired with it.  
“I like your work. Whose are you?”  
Jade thought that the boy obviously wasn’t smart enough to lie that he had an owner. And then, according to the laws of the City, he would be considered Crass’s property until the Super kicked him out. Or until he killed him. Or…  
Aste compressed his mouth tightly, unwilling to say the dishonorable words.  
“I see.”  
Fat hard fingers dug into Aste’s chin, raising it and making the boy turn his head from side to side.  
“You’ll go with me. I want to give you a ride.”  
Aste thought about his bike longingly; he would have to leave it here. But to refuse a Super… his self-preservation instinct could be weak but not to this extent, after all.  
“I need to change,” the boy said trying not to meet Jade’s eyes.  
“Do it then,” the red-haired man grinned.  
The half-blood hadn’t had many doings with Superiors before. Usually he dealt with Infers, the race of slaves, and half-bloods like him. He hadn’t happened to meet the owner of this workshop before – as an apprentice, Aste was not trusted anything important so far, they just checked what he was capable of. When the boss arrived, they sent the kid somewhere with some urgent task. Aste didn’t sense any danger and didn’t pay attention to it.  
It could be said yesterday was Aste’s first close contact with the race of Superiors.  
It was luck for a half-blood to find any work in the City. Slaves worked for Supers, and for half-bloods there was no place here or in villages. Everyone disdained them and didn’t consider them full-righted beings.  
Jade acutely needed additional help, and very cheap one. The help happened to be embodied in that boy. Aste didn’t beg to take him in, just glanced in asking if they needed a mechanic. If they had rejected him – he wouldn’t have been surprised. He would have continued looking or would’ve got back to a dangerous occupation – selling forbidden goods at the black market.  
He couldn’t afford depending on his mother.  
Aste took off the overalls when feeling someone’s gaze upon him. He turned around.  
He used to feel with the back of his head who was behind him and what purpose they had – but he was dealing with pure-blood Inferiors and half-bloods so far.  
And now…  
Behind him there was a guard of the boss, one of Supers.  
“Move your ass,” the man said with a wry smirk. “I’m here in case you decide to run.”  
Aste felt nervous. His instincts failed him. It was like he was standing in front of a concrete wall – couldn’t break through it, couldn’t scratch his way out.  
But there was another sensation, too obvious. A feeling of someone else’s stare licking his body. A nasty feeling.  
The man towered two steps away, ogling the naked kid and leering.  
Aste, for the first time in his life frightened with his nudity, lingered. He had to walk to the box to get his pants. He didn’t want to walk buck-naked under this foul stare.  
The guard seemed to read his thoughts.  
“Faster,” he sneered gleefully looking straight in the boy’s eyes. “The boss doesn’t like to wait. Get into your rags or I’ll drag you to the car like that.”  
Aste’s heart lurched.  
‘Go away, you bastard, go away! You don’t want me!’  
His thoughts rushed about in panic. Usually this panic was enough to scare away anyone who wanted to harm the kid. But now the being that used to save him disappeared.  
“You’ll go naked,” the Super said making a move towards the boy.  
Aste slipped under the reached hand to his box. He’d never dressed quicker than today. Panic was rolling over him in waves; the half-blood in vain summoned the courage that pushed him into a rendezvous with a Super yesterday.  
A heavy hand clasped on his shoulder and threw him to the door as if he was a kitten.  
“Keep walking… dolly.”  
Aste realized he had to escape as soon as possible. But impossible it proved.  
Another push tossed him into the workshop. The boss sat in the shining car and smoked. Looking at Aste, he beckoned him lazily.  
“Move.” The guard pushed the half-blood again. Aste got into the car, trying to keep his distance from the boss.  
“Don’t be so shy.” The red-haired man smirked and pawed Aste’s knee.  
The boy froze like a statue, staring right in front of him. There was noise in his ears.  
‘No. Please don’t… I don’t want to...’  
“Don’t be afraid,” the boss wrapped his arm around the half-blood’s shoulders and pulled him tighter, pouring him with cigar-smelling breath.  
The kid didn’t know what to do. Physically he was weaker than this man. He was weaker than anyone here, come to that. Break away and run? The guards were close. But he could try.  
Aste put his palm on the door handle and heard a click: Crass pushed on the blocker, cutting off the escape route. Leaning out of the window the Super ordered his guards to stay away.  
“We’re going home.”  
Tossing a cigar butt onto the floor of the workshop, Crass switched on the loudspeakers to full throttle and finally left.  
Jade followed them with a gaze.  
“Poor kid,” he whispered.  
All the way the Super smoked, cursed other drivers and talked on the phone; however, he didn’t stop pawing the kid who shrunk at the opposite side of the car. When his hand failed to reach Aste, the man leaned over the seat and pulled the boy closer. It was good only one of his hands was free.  
Aste sat, clenching his teeth so hard the line of his jaw was drawn white, looked through the front glass and tried not to focus on what was going on. He hadn’t ever felt so opposed to a sexual contact before and was surprised with his own reaction: yesterday he nearly jumped the bones of a Superior, wiggled his ass and yelled in delight but today… He didn’t want this man! He knew what would happen and didn’t want it with his entire soul. He didn’t want this Superior who was just like the one yesterday.  
Just like? Not quite. Aste glanced at Crass secretly, making sure the man couldn’t see his eyes in the mirror.  
A heavy profile with a huge dangling nose, a cigar clamped in the corner of the mouth, a hand bejeweled with massive rings of yellow and white… That Super yesterday wore no jewels. He didn’t have a stinky cigar or a belly that hung nearly to his knees. And his sedan was worth, according to the boy’s estimation, a few digits more than the damned M-600, even though there was no fur on its seats and the audio system inlaid with diamonds.  
And he’d never pawed Aste like that.  
And he did without guards. Guards Aste couldn’t escape.  
He didn’t want to escape yesterday.  
Aste tried hard to think about something else, to divert his attention from the hand that unzipped his pants and snuck in, kneaded his buttock with hard fingers, scraping the tender flesh with sharp edges of the rings.  
* * *  
The motorcade stopped at the estate in a luxurious district of the City. The boy hadn’t been here before. It was impossible for a master-less Inferior, the more so a half-blood, to appear here. Only those lucky ones who had a job and who clearly belonged to someone could be here. Lucky… or maybe unlucky ones. Like his mother.  
The blockers clicked and the guard opened the door on Aste’s side.  
With his shoulder clasped persistently, the boy walked to the entrance, followed with Crass’s harsh voice barking orders. He managed to talk on the phone and yell at the servants at the same time.  
“Wash the kid and bring him to my room.”  
Aste jerked in the hands of a smirking guard.  
‘That one wanted me even unwashed.’  
Anyway, Aste didn’t look dirty despite his position. But he heard from his buddies – Inferiors of the same age – why slaves were washed before being presented to their masters.  
The boy pushed against the ground with his feet, stalling. It was childish but his panic made him do ridiculous things.  
It didn’t even stop the guard but the fact of resistance angered the Super and he shoved the boy forward. Aste hit the door and flew into a wide hall.  
“Don’t you dare to ruin him!” The voice of Crass who heard the noise reached him. “I’ll ruin him myself.”  
The man’s happy glee cause goose bumps on Aste’s skin.  
‘No. No, no, no… I don’t want to…’ the thought fluttered in his mind.  
The boy was dragged into the ‘treatment room’. Its floor, walls and ceiling were laid with big white tiles. Also, Aste spotted a low metal bench with belts, a shower with a long hose that could reach from a wall to a wall. Slaves – Inferiors – rushed about, preparing the devices, moving aside whole parts of the wall that hid the tool shed.  
“Hurry up!” the guard snarled and pushed Aste to the slaves’ hands, then walked out and locked the door.  
The boy was taller than the native inhabitants of the planet enslaved by the Race; he was a crossbreed of two alien civilizations, a detractive nothingness for one and a bastard for the other. Aste knew of this attitude to half-bloods, especially from those who found a place in the City and was afraid to lose it. He knew the slaves just followed orders and if they had to, they’d help the guard to tame him. Here – no, in the whole City – there was no one who would stand by him. It was a law of life for half-bloods.  
But he couldn’t give up. He couldn’t let them humiliate him like that. Better to die.  
As soon as he felt a slave’s fingers on his arm, the boy drove his elbow into the slave’s jaw. The Inferior flew to the wall, moaning. Another one jumped onto Aste from behind but the boy turned quickly.  
“Just try,” he said through his teeth coldly.  
The slave stopped. He stood like a mannequin and stared at the boy, then stepped back. Aste heard the other one, the one he’d hit, whisper:  
“Shitty whore.”  
Fury was stronger than fear. The boy walked up to the slave, his lips stretched in a snarl. The slave shrunk, hiding behind his hands.  
“What are you doing there?” the guard yelled coming back as he realized there was no sound of running water.  
Aste rushed to the corner, grabbed the hose, untwining it, and hit the tumbler.  
A jet of nearly boiling water was so powerful that it reached through the whole room and hit the guard’s face.  
The man screamed, losing his balance for a moment, covering his face, and jumped back, falling on his knee. He yanked out a gun, switched it to a stunner and shot.  
Aste started dropping without a sound, like a fallen tree. The hose twitched on the floor, filling the room with steaming water.  
“Fuck your mother!” the Super shouted kicking and hitting the slaves, then jumped to Aste and caught him by the collar. He sighed in relief – Aste’s face was untouched with boiling water.  
“Clean it! Clean everything here! Quickly! If he’s not ready in ten minutes, I’ll stick this hose into your asses, one by one! I’ll fill you until you blow your intestines through your noses!”  
He tossed the boy onto the bench with such force that Aste felt his teeth chatter. There was blood taste in his mouth. The stunner, used for runaway slaves and criminals, didn’t block the senses.  
Slaves hurried around, draining the hot water and cleaning the room damaged with streams.  
The Super tied the wrists of the half-blood over his head, to prevent the limp body from sliding down, put the boy onto his side, with his knees pulled to the stomach and pointed the slaves to the prepared object, then left.  
One of the slaves took out scissors and simply cut off Aste’s clothes rolling him from side to side like a rag doll.  
Looking at the boy with hatred he squeezed the kid’s flaccid scrotum between the blades of the scissors.  
“Hey, what’re ya doing?” the other hissed. “Are ya crazy? The boss will tear ya apart for this!”  
“The bitch spoiled me face,” the Inferior spat. A huge bruise was spreading over his face, from chin to ear.  
His partner pushed him away from Aste and pulled closer a wheeled table. There was a six-liter jar of water mixed with analgesic hanging over the table. A thin hose going out of it ended with a catheter with a wide nozzle that could be used like a plug.  
Aste couldn’t move a finger. But his pupils went huge with fear and disgust.  
Unceremoniously the slave shoved the nozzle up Aste’s butt and switched the sensor to full power. Water ran through the hose noisily. The slave held the catheter to prevent it from slipping out under the force of water. The muscles of Aste’s rectum, paralyzed, didn’t give any resistance, so everything was proceeding smoothly and quickly.  
Aste felt he was about to burst. Water kept filling him. His head swam. He hurt and was ashamed. These slaves treated him like a slice of meat marinated for their master’s dinner.  
His belly was bloated with running water. Aste felt like a frog with a straw in the ass; when he was a child, he and his friends tried to blow a frog like that once, just out of natural scientific interest. Then they hadn’t understood anything but now he did – he knew what could happen and suddenly he felt very ashamed for that misfortunate frog tortured by children cruel in their ignorance.  
The pain in his swelling belly grew.  
Soon the boy, still motionless, couldn’t think about anything at all, neither about humiliation nor about the frog. Horrible pain tearing his insides apart shrouded everything. He felt as if a fountain of water was going to hit out of his mouth but he couldn’t even move, not to mention tell the slaves anything… ‘What’re you doing, shitheads?!’ He couldn’t even roll his eyes to look at his tormentors who kept holding the hose plugged into his ass.  
At the moment when the nozzle was pulled out and the water flushed back, washing out everything, Aste felt nothing but relief. Cruel relief akin to orgasmic pleasure when you were not allowed to come for a long time.  
Other feelings returned only when he felt the smell.  
Aste thought he’d never experienced such hatred before, hatred for humiliating him like that. But he couldn’t move a finger. Fury boiled inside him like in a tightly closed vessel, without a way out.  
After the procedure, still on the same bench, he was moved to the next room, leaving stink and filth behind; there the slaves washed him clean, twisting and turning him like a doll, and anointed him with perfume.  
The guard was back. Aste barely could notice a movement, felt a prick in his neck and a couple minutes later his body started obeying him again.  
The Superior slapped him twice, yanked him up onto his feet.  
Aste tried to regain his balance, reached for the wall in search of support, nearly doubling over.  
The Super didn’t miss his chance to smack the boy’s sticking-out ass; Aste, feeling too weak to reply, just snarled like a beast. The Super chortled.  
Upon his sign the slaves covered Aste’s shoulders with a quilt that looked more like a bedspread and the guard dragged him to the door clasping Aste’s arm to prevent him from falling or lagging behind. Running was nigh impossible for Aste in his state.  
The room was enormous. Aste hadn’t ever seen anything like that. A huge window that occupied the whole wall was hidden behind thick curtains. The door behind him slid shut without a sound but the boy’s heart banged so loudly that he flinched.  
Crass was sitting on the sofa, with his fat hairy legs spread wide. He was clad in a black silk gown embroidered with growling tigers. The gown was hardly belted, showing the man’s groin.  
Crass scratched his balls lazily while holding a receiver of an ancient phone in his other hand: he probably didn’t want to see the one he talked to. Seeing Aste the man sneered.  
“Fine, I’ll drop by tomorrow,” he said into the receiver. “I’ve got a whore a fuck.”  
He snorted at someone’s jape, cursed with gusto and tossed the receiver aside. Then he slapped his thigh, calling for Aste to sit at his feet.  
The boy stood at the door. He looked at Crass and smirked at the tigers on his gown.  
‘Tiger, oh please.’  
Aste knew how a real tiger looked like. What he saw now was a fat boar with red bristles on his sleek skin.  
Crass frowned; his eyes grew narrow as if he was capable of reading the boy’s thoughts.  
“Come here. If you think you can escape – take a look at the window.”  
Aste walked up to the window, glanced back at the man spread on the sofa, then pushed the curtain away just a little.  
Guards, high walls, defense field – nowhere to run.  
“Come here, kid,” Crass patted his hairy leg. “Be a good boy.”  
His voice changed threateningly. The Super looked straight in Aste’s eyes. Something in this stare penetrated the boy, making him freeze like a rabbit in front of a snake, stop resisting… stop…  
Aste shook his head breaking away from the thrall; he prayed desperately to the being that helped him so many times before.  
There was no answer. The thing that worked against slaves failed with a Superior.  
“Stop fighting, kid.”  
The voice enveloped his consciousness. For a moment the captive submitted to it, made a step towards the sofa. But then his eyelids rose, his eyes flashing brightly through the tousled ashen strands.  
“I’m not your whore.”  
The boy spat it through the clenched teeth, raising his head defiantly and wrapping into a quilt tighter.  
‘Maybe I have nowhere to run but I’m not your whore. Take me. If you can.’  
Taking another glance at the captive’s rebellious eyes Crass figured out that the kid wouldn’t comply. Well, Crass enjoyed breaking them rebels, and there had been no one who resisted for long.  
The cheeky little bastard wasn’t coming up; fine, Crass could use some exercise.  
In a light, fluid motion that hardly could be expected from such a massive body the man slid towards the boy. Aste saw a hand reaching for him and rushed side. An armchair turned up under his feet and the boy who still was under the influence of all previous manipulations rolled over it, barely managed to re-group and keep himself from breaking a limb or two.  
The man shoved the arm-chair away. Aste, foreseeing the inevitable, grabbed a vase. The Super didn’t expect it, and the vase was convenient to throw.  
Crass barely avoided it, grabbed the boy in one movement, yanked to himself knowing that this little snake would writhe out of the quilt in a moment. He was getting tired with running; it was time to teach the impudent whore a lesson.  
His powerful fist broke onto the kid’s temple, knocking Aste down and throwing the light body into the corner. For a split second Aste lost his breath but still rose on his knees in the last effort. The Super yanked him up and threw on the sofa, leaning with all his weight onto the slender body lying in an awkward pose.  
Unconcerned with the boy’s joints crunching and a loud painful shriek breaking out of his throat, Crass twisted the captive’s arms behind his back. He looked around, cursed and dragged the boy along, clasping both his wrist in one hand.  
Pushing away bookshelves that hid a secret compartment, Crass chose a pair of handcuffs.  
Aste raised his head. Above him there was a whole arsenal of devices that, as he had heard, allowed bringing some entertainment into the boring sexual life of overfed aristocracy. He started fighting. Crass yanked his hands up sharply, nearly breaking the wrists.  
Sparkles danced in front of his eyes. Aste growled in fury, working his legs, sliding on the slippery carpet.  
Crass cuffed his wrists, then threw him aside and kicked, glaring with blood-filled, enraged eyes. He turned to the tools and smirked nastily taking out a cock extension made from strong latex and sporting helical protrusions and rubber pins.  
“You gonna like it,” he hissed promisingly.  
Grabbing the boy’s hair he dragged him back. Pain and his wish to lessen it made Aste stop kicking and push with his feet to follow enraged Crass.  
Crass got a better grip on his hands, struck his face forcefully to punish for resisting. But the lesson was far from over.  
Aste fell with his chest onto a glass table, overturning a bowl full of fruit. Black, small berries he didn’t know spilled over the white carpet. The boy hit his chin painfully.  
Crass twisted his arms, pulled them up until his captive started gasping, trying not to debase himself with a moan.  
“Aren’t you a proud one?” The Super laughed.  
He kicked the boy’s body up the table, so that he lay with his groin against the edge. Spreading the victim’s legs and groping under the boy’s belly, he squeezed Aste’s scrotum between his skinny thighs and the glass ridge.  
Then Crass put his foot onto the captive’s ass and started pressing.  
Aste twitched, writhing, trying to crawl lower and free his balls. Pain was tearing through him, making his insides twist. The edge of the table dug into his flesh, to the point of squashing it.  
Crass leaned forward, shifting his weight onto the pressuring foot even more.  
“Enough, no? Want some more?”  
Aste cursed but in the end of his tirade his voice treacherously thinned and broke into a hoarse whine.  
Without taking off his foot, clearly aroused, as if soaking in the victim’s fear, pain and hatred with his entire huge body, Crass put the extension onto his cock. It sucked on the living flesh as if it were an integral part of it.  
Aste was used to fighting but pain in a fight was like an award for bravery. This pain – inflicted on purpose – was new for him. Even the thoughts of escape waned in his consciousness that was filled up with the desire to get rid of that horrible, draining pain in the perineum.  
When the man let him go, took off his foot and stopped twisting his arms, for a few moments Aste just couldn’t move, relishing the pain that was leaving slowly, turning into the ache in his blackened flesh.  
‘It’s very easy to give pleasure. First you give pain and then you stop.’  
It was a short relief. Next moment the boy felt cruel hands on his buttocks, and Crass’s cock pushed against his anus. The extension turned the cock’s size into akin to a stallion’s. Judging upon the slide of the huge instrument, there was some lube but only on the hideously sticking member.  
Crass didn’t bother with either lubing the boy or at least stretching him somewhat.  
The only thing Aste managed in that brief moment of respite was to crawl down from the table a little, saving his balls from crushing.  
Aste shut his eyes tightly as if in hope that it would be easier to bear humiliation in darkness. He felt the huge spear stretching him, entering with difficulty.  
‘It won’t fit,’ a thought flashed through his mind.  
A sharp, agonizing pain started in his ass, spreading swiftly, clawing its way up his backbone.  
His fingers curled trying to grab the air. The boy was petrified, afraid to move, just mewed pitifully in pain.  
“Take it… take it out!” he groaned without realizing his request wouldn’t be answered.  
Crass leaned back slightly to enjoy the sight of blood – and then, content, entered deeper.  
Rubber pins pushed against Aste’s prostate. At the same time the tears of his sphincter widened. The boy felt as if he was slowly, steadily torn apart. He tried not to moan, breathed loudly writhing on Crass’s cock. His scrotum and limp, shrinking penis were pressed into the glass table, blue and swollen, but this pain was vastly engulfed with the torment in his ruptured anus.  
The Super reveled in the sight in front of him: those broken lines of a thin body, the blood leaking from the boy’s ass, smearing the table as Crass moved dragging the boy up and down as if they were fused together. And this wheezing breath turning into soft, quiet moans from time to time… The man grinned and kneaded the boy’s small buttock, pushed it aside sharply to review the torn entrance. He pulled out, still looking, absorbing the trembling of the violated body, relishing the traces of red of the glistening surface of his cock.  
Crass left just the head alone inside. The pins bumped into the ripped flesh.  
Aste moaned. He felt he was dying. He thought he would die a terrible death as soon as Crass got out of him: his intestines would just spill out.  
The face of the stranger he met yesterday appeared in front of his eyes. It was such a long time ago, Aste thought. And when the pain rose to unbearable, the boy decided that meeting had never happened at all. He just dreamed it. It couldn’t happen. Everything they said about Superiors was true. They could only torture, rape and murder people like him. Half-bloods were worse than slaves. And it they got you – you’d better bite off your tongue until they took this chance away from you and start gutting you slowly, drinking vine at the same time.  
And if Aste didn’t have any instinct of self-preservation, it was his own fault. So, he had to pay for it.  
The boy felt his eyes burning. He didn’t want to die.  
He begged the stranger, for some reason imagining him to be his keeper, the supreme being that used to save him till now.  
‘Save me. Please. Save me!’  
But the deity didn’t answer. It seemed to forget Aste lately.  
The cock ripping his anus was a sheer torture; the boy had never thought sex could inflict such pain.  
There was no chance to get off the ram battering his insides, to crawl away, no chance to get used to the blinding pain, even though Aste had heard from someone that the pain would go away if he relaxed. Wait, it was not just something he had heard – yesterday he got an opportunity to check it.  
But today was different. Relaxing was not an option; Crass’s slamming did everything to damage the rebellious half-blood as much as possible.  
The man enjoyed the profile of the boy who whined in torment, tears smeared on his cheeks, tears Aste couldn’t keep.  
Last time Aste had cried from pain was when he was a child but now he didn’t even notice his tears that ran over his cheeks and mingled on his chin with spittle leaking from his half-opened mouth.  
Crass kept battering him, in sharp spurts, pushing even deeper; time stopped for Aste. With his lips bitten through and his eyes shut he simply waited for the torment to stop, just hissing at especially deep blows.  
‘He’ll come, he’ll come soon… just… bear with it…’  
Crass did come rather quickly; the silicone extension massaged his cock squeezed by the tight ass quite well. Last time slamming deeply into the torn flesh, the Super finally yanked his cock out, leaving behind scarlet glistening rivulets and a gaping mutilated hole that couldn’t even close  
Aste felt the huge plug was not tearing him anymore and slipped down on the floor. Splitting pain that pierced him from his ass upwards barely allowed him moving, making him stay straight, as if on a stake. His first instinct was to hide, at least under the table, like a wounded beast, to cover the injured place from the enemy.  
But his reason told him it wouldn’t help hiding under the table, and it was not worth debasing himself.  
Aste sat up, leaning against his hip, avoiding touch the floor with his bleeding backside, the raised his head and grinned looking at the Superior.  
“So, no one gives it to you willingly and you have to take it by force?”  
His mother was right: he did lack the basic, most important instinct.  
The Super had never heard such words. From anyone. Neither from the member of his own race, nor, all the more so, from a half-blood or an Inferior.  
The punishment was momentary.  
Battering the skinny body curled under his feet was a pleasure. But soon Crass had to stop. Killing such an amusing toy was not a part of his plans.  
Wrapping himself into his gown, Crass called for his servants by selector.  
Through the spreading noise in his ears Aste heard the words coming like from under the layer of water.  
“Toss the little bitch out. He got his lesson. And clean the room.”  
Aste tried to raise his head, with an effort of will, but a black wave covered him, dragging him into a whirlpool. There were more than enough impressions for today. He lost consciousness.  
* * *  
The first thing he felt when coming round was sickness.  
The boy lay in a fetal pose, covered with a blood-stained quilt.  
Spasms didn’t stop even though he had nothing to retch with, everything had been washed out of him. Heaving twisted his body, waking up the horrible pain, draining his last strength. Splits started bleeding again.  
Aste had never felt so humiliated, so empty, so soiled. He had never thought it could be possible. It was one thing to hear about it happening to someone else and quite different to feel it himself. He would rather they killed him…  
No, he wasn’t so sure about it anymore. Despite the crushing pain that made him whimper softly, the boy wanted to live. He was not ready to die.  
Aste tried to move his foot. Sharp pain shot through him; he froze holding his breath.  
But was he going just to stay lying like that?  
It was cold, and Aste’s teeth started chattering. When he got completely frozen, the pain quieted, and the boy could focus on his surroundings.  
He lay at the backdoor of the house allocated for servants. Next to him there were vats with tall, cultivated cypresses and trash containers that processed the remnants of human food turning them into the fuel for mechanisms.  
Aste felt glad they hadn’t shoved him into a container; it even surprised him they didn’t. Maybe he was really a lucky one.  
But how was he going to get out of here? And where to?  
He needed to get his bike from the workshop. He couldn’t go home; if his mother saw him like that, she’d have a heart attack.  
They had taken off the cuffs. But it was no use. He couldn’t even get on his fours.  
Aste felt empty inside. He couldn’t focus on anything. He didn’t know what he felt about himself.  
The boy closed his eyes and nearly passed out again when a hard hand yanked his forearm. His head dangled. He heard gruff cursing. It was the guard whom he’d scalded with boiling water when fighting.  
Spilling vile curses the man dragged the boy by the forearm and shoved to the backseat of a car.  
“What do they think I am? Shit loader?” Aste heard. “Fuck. Now I have to drive this bitch. Ooh fuck your mother!”  
Aste realized Crass ordered to take him somewhere. Perhaps to kill, he thought.  
But it was easier to put him into a container.  
So, it had to be something else.  
He couldn’t resist the heavy shroud of darkness that covered him again. Falling asleep, he inhaled metallic tang in the air. ‘Blood smell,’ was his last thought.  
Next time his consciousness came back with the feeling of someone else’s hands groping his body.  
Aste barely managed to unglue his eyelids swollen with bruises and saw the face of the guard who was ordered to take him somewhere. The face drew closer, and at the next moment the exhausted boy thought the guard was going to use him, too. Whether he would be able to bear another cock in his torn hole, Aste couldn’t imagine. Gathering his last strength he squirmed, crawling to the opposite door. His body again felt as if speared with a stake but he was not going to give up without a fight.  
The guard cursed. Grabbing the boy’s arm, he threw Aste out of the car, sending the bloodied quilt after him. It was his only clothes for now, Aste simply didn’t have anything else to change, even at home. Not to mention that he was not at home at all.  
And the guard throwing him out of the car didn’t mean he was letting him go; perhaps he simply didn’t want to stain the upholstery.  
Anyway, having a skinny battered body with a bloodied ass and a bruised face with swollen eyes was a dubious pleasure.  
The boy was lucky: he heard door slamming and the car left, abandoning him right on the road.  
Fortunately, it was not the whole extent of his luck. In a couple steps away Aste saw the gate of Master Jade’s workshop – the very place he’d left a few hours ago.  
So, Crass had just ordered to bring him back. Thank you for that.  
Aste jerked reaching for the quilt; the movement took almost all he had. His head span. He pulled the rag over himself and curled again, feeling the world swirl around, making him screw his eyes shut, threatening to engulf him in darkness.  
‘Just a moment… I’ll just rest for a moment…’  
He didn’t see that, when the rear lights of the car disappeared completely, the workshop’s gate slid up and Jade accompanied with a couple of workers bent over his crumpled body.  
* * *  
Jade held pincers with a wad of cotton soaked in painkiller mixed with anesthetic. They had taken off the applications from the boy’s face a couple days ago, when the swelling went down, but kept treating his scabs. Jade himself smeared tears in the boy’s anus with healing ointment. At first Aste didn’t react at all, just hissed and flinched with pain. But as soon as he got a little better, it became psychologically difficult for him to bear with those procedures. Jade practically could sense it in the boy’s lowered head, face hidden behind the strands of ashen hair, in his stony pose. The Infer understood that now the boy was capable of feeling a new portion of humiliation, not out of torment but out of deliverance from it.  
They couldn’t take the boy to a doctor. Some illegal clinic could have taken care of him, for money. But they barely managed to gather some money to buy him new clothes and used the medicines they kept in the workshop first-aid kit.  
Some of the employees were none too happy with a sponger but Jade told them he was paying for the boy. Those ones who helped sympathized with Aste as much as he did.  
The boy tensed.  
“Bear with it. It’ll stop burning soon.” Jade soaked a scab on the boy’s back. “Sit still. When it gets dry, you can dress.”  
Aste learned to flinch when someone touched him. In sleep he was often running somewhere, shivering. His limbs convulsed, strained fingers tried to hook and hold something invisible, his face distorted in a snarl.  
Sometimes Jade, seeing his apprentice in such a state, sat down on the edge of the worn-out sofa and stroked the boy’s hair.  
Once an employee stopped Jade to talk.  
“We need to get the boy out of here. Why do you think the boss didn’t kill him? He’s keeping him for a follow-up. And if he finds him here, he’ll take him again. But if he doesn’t – well, we’re not his guards, he can run away, that’s all.”  
Jade nodded.  
“But it’s too early. He can barely walk.”  
“Well, Jade. It’s your responsibility.”  
“Whose else…”  
* * *  
“Hey Aste.”  
The boy who lay under a truck pushed against its edge and slid out to squint under the luminescent light of the workshop. He got significantly better by now, enough to help. They didn’t ask him to but he did it in repayment for them taking care of him and to soothe his own conscience.  
Master Jade squatted looking at him.  
The half-blood stared back at him. The boy’s face was almost free from bruises, the dark stains on it were grease.  
“I have something for you. Did you hear about interplanetary air-car races?”  
Aste blinked.  
“Who didn’t?” he said carefully.  
“Do you want to go? With me?”  
The half-blood froze with his mouth open, suddenly losing his breath.  
“Do you?” the master pretended he was not going to wait for an answer too long and would easily find a buyer for the ticket.  
”I have no money.”  
Jade deliberately rolled up his eyes.  
“Did I ask you about money?”  
“I do,” Aste replied quickly. “I’ll go.”  
Jade nodded.  
“Well then, tomorrow we get up early.”  
* * *  
Aste was staring around.  
It was his first time here, at the central racing trek that spirally ascended high above. Usually the races the boy watched or participated in were arranged illegally and took place in the trails of the abandoned space port that towered like a huge dark mass threatening to squash little bugs at its foundation.  
It was the first official race he was going to watch in his life. He gaped at the crowd: half-bloods and Infers were here, too, filled the bottom tier to the brim.  
Inferiors didn’t show any disgust towards half-bloods.  
In the villages of Infers it was different: they worked, feeding themselves with their own means, and turned to wizards for help and healing. They didn’t need to fear being beaten or mutilated by their angered lords, had some rights of their own. Their Elders even held some significant power.  
This way they lived in their native settlements – until Supers came for tribute or for entertainment.  
For half-bloods it was the same way anywhere. In villages they could be stoned at a sign from an Elder. In towns they were considered trash but at least their chances for survival were a little higher.  
Aste didn’t know how all those people managed to get a ticket – and how his employer managed it, come to that – but, frankly speaking, he didn’t care much. His idea was: if you’re not a Super, you can either steal it or buy at the black market.  
Everyone was let in.  
On higher tiers one could see some Inferiors, too – but mostly accompanying young Supers. There were no half-bloods; it was considered a shame to have a half-blood slave, a sign of poverty and low birth.  
Race trek was situated on several levels. Sudden curves rose, fell down, rushed from side to side creating extremely abrupt turns. Loops built one over another making it impossible to figure out where this conundrum was beginning and ending. Aste heard that those loops were the most dangerous part of the way; it was barely possible to see where you fly at the speed close to sound velocity. It was easy to take a curve of the next loop for the desired turn and fall down from the height of a hundred meters. It was possible to take a wrong loop that was a death sentence as well, if you didn’t have time to eject.  
There were neon pointers on the road but they switched on only at a certain moment, right in front of the racer’s nose, showing him the way to the next stage. They didn’t help at all, rather being a psychological moment that made you panic. The winner was the one whose intuition and self-control worked better.  
Aste’s head span from one glance at the huge construction. Jade supported him.  
“Stay here. I’ll buy a hotdog.” The master walked away. The mention of food made Aste’s mouth water. He didn’t remember when he ate to his heart’s content last time. Today they both got up early and skipped breakfast.  
Aste waited watching the complex. Enormous screens lined the perimeter of the stands and were supposed to demonstrate every detail of the race.  
Jade came back quickly, with a package and two plastic glasses of coffee. He gave one of them to Aste and took out a hotdog from the package.  
The boy nearly growled sticking his teeth into it and swallowed it in two seconds. Jade glanced at his slightly bitten sandwich and gave it to Aste. The boy was not squeamish.  
“Look!” suddenly Aste yelled, bounced in excitement and gasped in pain; it made him stop making any sharp motions in future. “It’s Yii! He’s participating!”  
Jade snorted. The Alderanian was an idol of many young men dreaming of racing.  
The face of the racer – his black pupil-less eyes set wide – filled every screen. Yii raised his hand in a greeting and walked to his shining golden bolide under the howl of stands.  
They said the Alderanian had construed his bolide when he was still young and worked with it since then – which meant, more than two hundred years. Now it was an almost perfect car of an air-flow shape, sealed in light carbon-titan armor that didn’t hinder aerodynamics, with two main and two backup engine, quant accelerators and reverse traction for extreme braking.  
Aste gaped at the racers loudly discussing them with Jade. The master chortled seeing the boy’s sincere delight; Aste’s cheeks were flushed with excitement.  
The half-blood knew many of the racers and Jade told him about those he didn’t.  
The crowd hollered in greeting, words barely comprehensible.  
“It’s Gaatu! Isn’t he too old for a race? He’s even older than his bolide,” Aste laughed, delighted.  
“You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. This old man did such things in my youth that no one can dream of now.”  
“I hope the blind duck won’t smash into anyone,” Aste muttered.  
“I bet you prefer those like Aio,” Jade said teasingly.  
Aio was a part of a bolide. An experiment, a consciousness of a living being settled in a capsule connected to the heart of the machine, doomed to stay there to the very end. A soul and a processor at the same time.  
The screen showed a group of scientists that inserted a capsule with some muddy liquid into the central compartment of a red-and-black bolide – as if putting a fetus into an incubator.  
“Where is this pervert?” Jade squinted.  
“There!” Aste pointed at the four-armed man walking after a bolide. It was Keida Arakno, psycho-biology professor at Kraa-Da University, famous in many galaxies for his eccentricity and sometimes for brutality of his experiments.  
There were twelve racers.  
Twelve – one of the numbers of universe order.  
The racers were unusual, incomprehensible, unfathomable. They looked like a bird, or an amorphous being, a swarm of insects of a carnivorous beast with jagged tusks. Their reasons for participating were different as well: money, glory, demonstrating that they were still fit for fighting.  
The announcer’s voice flew out of loudspeakers, introducing the personalities that were known to everyone.  
“Today our event is truly unique! His Majesty honored the Central Trek with his presence! All hail the Emperor!”  
Enormous screens revealed the sight of the Emperor’s box.  
Aste and Jade looked at the monitors where two Superiors rested in comfortable arm-chairs. The camera focused on their faces. One of them was His Majesty the Supreme Monarch of the Empire. And the other one… the one who animatedly discussed something with the Emperor, laughing as if they were friends…  
Master Jade turned feeling Aste’s tensed shoulder. The boy looked at the screen with absolutely rounded eyes, so astonished as Jade had never seen him before.  
…The other man on the screen was his recent fucker from the back lane, ‘a cool guy with a cool car’, the one Aste, in a sudden lack of intelligence, dared seduce.  
‘Fuck,’ the boy’s lips moved soundlessly.  
Seeing Master Jade’s curious look, Aste with an effort of will dispelled his obsession and asked as carelessly as he could, pointing at the screen:  
“Who’s that?”  
The man was surprised even more.  
“Are you sick? They said, it’s the Emperor, didn’t you hear? Hello, what planet are you from? Have you never seen His Majesty on TV?”  
“Nah, not the Emperor. Next to him. Do you know him?”  
Master Jade took a look at the monitor. Of course he knew that face. Sometimes they showed him on TV as well: the last scion of Monso dynasty, the family almost equal to the Emperor. Anari Monso. But there were other things Jade had heard.  
…Scarlet flames, people rushing around, and a Superior in black leather, a blaster on his shoulder, reached his hand to a black-haired Inferior boy hiding in the corner of a demolished house. It was unlikely anyone would ever see the boy again. Unlikely anyone would want to see.  
Kids like that would later join the crowd of lowest outcasts inhabiting the slums of the City – banished as unclean from their native villages. Or – if the victim used by the village to pay off was a girl – she’d bear half-bloods like Aste, lowest of the lowest.  
But it was no wonder that the half-blood hardly watching news didn’t know any details of the elite’s life. His main objective was to survive, after all.  
“So, do you know him?”  
The kid’s voice interrupted the master’s musing.  
Jade looked away from the monitor that kept babbling about His Majesty – ‘a brief, forty minute speech’ – and snorted.  
“If you meet him – beware.” The master’s face grew serious. “He’s worse than Crass. Much worse.”  
And seeing the stubborn boy frown, Jade explained:  
“He’s a Chastiser. Special force elite commander, on the news often. He’s almost equal to the Emperor, unless reporters lie. Force knows, you know what I mean. But whatever they say on the news, I know that Inferiors and especially half-bloods,” Jade shoved his finger at the boy’s chest, “should beware Anari Monso and his team. I don’t know what hole you crawled out of, boy, but even my mother’s mother scared her with these tales.”  
‘Chastiser,’ Aste thought in amazement. ‘But then he was supposed to tear me apart.’  
The boy remembered hard fingers coated in lube, entering his hole roughly, spreading to stretch him.  
‘Relax. It’ll be better.’  
He felt goose bumps with those memories.  
Aste caught Jade’s suspicious stare and turned away hastily. He looked at the screen but the camera showed the bolides preparing to the start. For the first time this sight was disappointing – Aste wanted to keep looking at the Chastiser.  
Of course, he heard scary stories about a man that could harm him, when he was a child. Mother told him about a monster, merciless, capable of destroying everything on its way. Aste, his eyes glittering, was always thinking how this powerful monster could look. What might was it supposed to have? After leafing through military and technique magazines, he could imagine only a dim image, a mass of muscles and metal, a cold piercing stare. This image frightened and attracted. Sometimes Aste saw this monster in his dreams and woke up with drying traces of semen on his thighs and belly.  
‘But he is even cooler than I could imagine. Worse than Crass? He cannot be worse than Crass. He never humiliated me.’  
Aste came to some conclusions and even relaxed a little.  
Turning around and rising on tiptoes – which allowed him to be a whole head taller than the crowd of slaves and half-bloods – the boy tried to find the Emperor’s box with his eyes – what if he could see, not on the screen but live…  
But the trek’s cycling construction set the box too high and back and the armored glass didn’t let anyone see what happened inside.  
‘He wasn’t a dream,’ Aste though in delight but tried to blow out the candle of his childish joy at once. ‘He is a highest from the highest. All I have left are memories.’  
The boy quickly said good-bye to the miracle that had left his ass in ache for a long time and his legs disobedient. But what happened next felt as if a Super-nova exploding in his chest and made him stop looking for ‘him’.  
Racers had to start simultaneously and now everyone took their places in the bolides. Professor Keida shoved all his four hands into the central compartment of the car. Behind the tinted glass, a dim light grew there and at the same time a spoiler and side aerodynamic feathers were drawn out. According to the experts from ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, there feathers could literally push against the air.  
Aste didn’t particularly trust all those gadgets. He preferred things a man made with his own hands, brought it to perfection.  
‘Good luck,‘ he wished to the golden bolide when the cameras showed it again.  
“And I remind you that our race consists of three stages,” the announcer continued. “The first one is a high-speed, practically straight part of the trek. The task of the racers is to earn some time there. The second stage is a serpentine, twenty kilometers of sharpest turns on various levels of distorted space. The last one is loops – or ‘loops of death’, as some call them. If we are lucky, not everyone will finish them!” The announcer guffawed and Aste flipped a bird in the direction of the announcing tower.  
“His Majesty is giving an order to start! All hail the Emperor!”  
Aste glanced at the stands of Superiors with interest. Young people yelled, shaking their fists. The lords occupying clan boxes applauded quietly. What happened higher, the half-blood couldn’t see. The highest of the highest were hidden from an idler’s sight.  
The screens showed the Emperor’s box again. He distracted from the conversation with his comrade to raise his hand, sliming calmly.  
A deafening signal came, stands burst in excitement and the cars shot forward drilling through the air with the roar of engines. It seemed their power practically twisted the space.  
Aste’s gaze was glued to the screen closest to them. His fingernails dug into his palms; he bit his lips nervously.  
Yii was the fifth.  
“Fuck you,“ the half-blood muttered. “You’ll lose! Come on. Come on!”  
“I think,” Jade whispered, “he’ll try to do them all during the serpentine.”  
Aste snorted in displeasure.  
“Who do you support?”  
“Try to guess.”  
Gaatu drove logically. He outran those seven racers who were not up to being his rivals. Then he passed Yii who lingered accidentally and Dharwa’s bolide that was clattering as if on the verge of breaking apart. Dharwa’s tentacles swished behind the glass, turning many tumblers at the same time. Gaatu became the third.  
“But he won’t outrun that experiment!” In anger Aste slammed his fist against his palm.  
Jade didn’t reply, just smirked as if saying: ‘What do you know, kid.’  
Aio left everyone far behind.  
“Is it even fair?” the half-blood was irritated.  
“Fair,” the master said reasonably. “There is a living being inside it – or at least the mind of a living being. It is not forbidden.”  
Trying to close the distance to the experimental bolide, Gaatu barely fit in the first curve of the serpentine. His air-car was tossed up, nearly breaking the space field. Yii, agile and flexible, shot by. His angle was smaller, he straightened quickly, practically without losing speed, just moderating it a little with reverse forcing, and disappeared behind the corner.  
Aste yelled in delight.  
“See it!”  
Several monitors were showing the sight from the cabins of pilots now. It was unbearable to look at the screens for long. The effect of presence made you dizzy. On both sides dim curves of space corridor flashed past you, and in front of you there were falls and abrupt rises. Trek suddenly disappeared and when you were about to lose yourself in the feeling ‘It’s the end’, the screen suddenly showed a new curve, sliding into it with the racers.  
Everyone had overcome the serpentine, with various degrees of success. Aio was permanently in the lead. When approaching the third stage he suddenly halted. The surface of the red-and-black bolide was changing: feathers compressed making the car look like a jagged tip of an arrow; sensors ready to catch any changes in space appeared on the surface.  
This transformation took only a few seconds but it was enough for Yii and Gaatu, bumping each other with their sides, to reach the leader.  
“Just look at that,” Aste whispered in awe. “How does he know when he has to transform?”  
Jade squinted his eyes without looking away from the screen. Yii there went into a sharp pique and Gaatu who was going to cut in front of him nearly missed the turn to the same loop. Now he was backing off, and Dharwa clattered past him, followed with some more racers.  
“Huh? Ah… I heard that thing Keida uses as his experimental model reacts to the space vibrations. It is like it exists in several space layers at the same time and every moment runs various options. The highest layer is always the only correct step.”  
“Then he’ll lose, for sure.” Aste was angry with the red-and-black bolide, with Arakno who dragged his experiment into the race, with the Emperor who didn’t forbid it…  
The camera switched to Yii’s bolide, with a dim silhouette of the leader in front of him. The roar of the engine that dragged the car up the loop - and then insanely howling reverse thrust that didn’t let the car fall into the abyss. A pointer flashed suddenly, the bolide turned to the opposite side…  
Stands went silent. The audience waited to see the golden car fall down from the enormous height – like a bird hit with a stone. But the cameras showed the car make a somersault in the space corridor, digging a furrow in it – and the golden bolide upside down rushed to the necessary direction.  
Gaatu raised his head. Yii, with his hair hanging onto the transparent lid of the car, winked and pushed the engine to full throttle, switching to drift at the next turn before the loop.  
“Oh fuck,” Aste whispered.  
There were just a few loops left. The route map was almost totally covered.  
The racers knew it was time for desperate measures. Those who were in the rearguard didn’t hurry any more, knowing they wouldn’t be on the pedestal and took care of keeping their positions.  
Gaatu decided that he had to take the third place. He overtook a loop confidently, and now only four of them were left. He could see the scheme of others moving on the monitor: Yii was close to the red-and-black bolide. The old racer hardly could understand how the Alderanian could manage it but Yii swiftly reached the experimental car that was passing the loop before last.  
The dot that meant Dharwa’s bolide approached quickly. Gaatu couldn’t believe his eyes. The car of the ten-armed man was going with impossible speed, spinning around it axis and leaving one loop. Breaking through the gravitation barrier, it entered the next one that slightly slowed the flight, obviously uncontrollable. The car passed the loop through its center. Differentials of the space – distorted inside the trek and normal – crumpled the bolide. Now it looked like a twenty-meter knobby meteor.  
This meteor was going at the trajectory that, in a couple of moments, was going to cross Yii’s way.  
The Alderanian noticed the danger but all he had time to do was to eject. When Yii fell on the trek, the twisted meteor that had changed its trajectory after bumping into the golden bolide flew over him.  
Gaatu was closing.  
“He’ll melt him!” Aste screamed. “His engine! It’ll kill him!”  
But the air-car slowed down, landed on the trek in a hundred meters from the Alderanian. The lid opened, inviting him to join.  
Yii ran up to the bolide and jumped in.  
“See?” Jade shook Aste’s shoulder; the boy was paper-white. Aste smiled gingerly. “Others wouldn’t stop.”  
The stands greeted the winner. Its ‘father’ retrieved it from the car and put into protective armor. Leaving it to one of his assistants to get the cup, Keida disappeared.  
“What happened to the fourth?” Aste asked.  
As if answering his question, the announcer said that it was impossible to define the precise reason of Dharwa’s death. But knowing how impulsive the members of his race were, it was permissible to speak of a suicide out of despair. The announcer didn’t fail to express his joy that the ‘loops of death’ kept bringing their fruit and it was too early to come up with something new.  
Yii, a whole head taller than Gaatu, was giving an interview. Gaatu looked a bit embarrassed since the Alderanian was particularly eloquent expressing his gratitude. It the end Yii even bowed to kiss the old racer.  
Aste sniggered.  
“You know, I think they won the race, not Aio.”  
“Yeah, Gaatu’s got a piece of good fortune onto his old head. One like you.” The man tousled Aste’s hair and, suddenly self-conscious, changed the topic. “Those Alderanians are like kids. They do what they want and don’t bother to hide what they want.”  
“Come on,” the half-blood snorted. “Yii is simply grateful for saving his life. And his gratitude will have a certain manifestation.”  
The crowd was getting thinner. Arched exits of the trek sucked in Inferiors and half-bloods. Superiors walked out through different gates.  
After waiting for a while, Aste and Jade walked to the exit as well, discussing the race, happy despite everything.  
The boy turned glancing at the Emperor’s box.  
‘Farewell,’ he thought and resolutely followed the master into the darkness of the arch.

To be continued

 

**Chapter I some afterwords and explanation.**

Superiors are a higher race, aliens that invaded the Planet; Inferiors are a native race. The planet’s occupation happened a long time ago, in the beginning of its civilization.  
Relations between the Superiors and the Inferiors are similar to simple caste ones.  
Colonel Monso’s activities  
The Colonel is a chastener. His functions are connected to the necessity of keeping the agrarian Inferiors under the control of the superior race; holding the Inferiors in fear even when the permanent presence of controlling entities is impossible; fighting against Rebels, with alternate success.  
For example, as an extreme measure, the Colonel can burn a village, extinguish a clan leaving only two-three people alive to tell the tale. But elimination is economically unprofitable, so as a usual measure he comes to a village and demands a youth as a payment. A chosen victim will be violated, which results in an exile or even death (by stoning) for him or her for not keeping their chastity till marriage. Sexual intercourse outside marriage is taboo both for boys and girls; that is why the ‘ruined’ ones are exiled, even if they were raped.  
The very same thing happens if any other Superior comes to a village, the owner of the village, for example (villages belong to Superiors as their ancestral property), but he needs to have a desire to do so (drag himself to a village for such an entertainment), while the Colonel does it out of duty. However, telling the truth, he can visit a village just for fun. That is why it’s clear that the Colonel and his team cause panic terror.  
For a village it is unimportant whether it was a Superior who made one of the village residents break their chastity, so, it is not out of some disapproval of Superiors. If an alien sins with a villager, or a person from another clan, or even two people from the same clan are caught having sex before marriage, they still will be punished and exiled.  
Age and height  
Aste is 2.20 meters tall and still growing. However, he will never be as tall as Superiors but it’s naturally easier with him than with Inferiors. However, Superiors don’t usually have sex with half-bloods because half-bloods are almost never pretty (it’s a particularity of this world that half-bloods there happen to be grey, unremarkable). Aste is exclusion but he is exclusive not only due to his looks. Anyway, normally Superiors, including the Colonel, prefer to use Inferiors for sex. Besides, any Superior can (is entitled to) desire and take any Inferior (of course, if the latter doesn’t have a more influential or powerful master from Superiors). The City has a wide net offering intimate services to the Superior, and all Superiors use this net, regardless their gender. It is not considered disgraceful for the society, it’s a norm.  
The problems caused by the difference in size are of no concern for the Superior (one more reason that instigates fear). Actually these problems can be solved, with their level of technology (the lube the Colonel used with Aste and its difference from the one Aste offered) but Superiors almost never bother. Lords of life.  
In human terms, Aste is 16, he’s still a teenager. In this world life span is ten times longer in comparison to human maximum of 100 years. The process of growing till puberty goes the same way as on the Earth; then an adult man lives for a long time and very quickly wans in the end. Aste reached puberty at 12, since then he’ll grow and develop slower.  
That means that the Planet has seen fewer generations than the Earth would see during the same period of time. Half-bloods, being outcasts, rarely find a couple to propagate, even with another half-blood or an Inferior. There was no precedent of a couple between a Superior and a half-blood.  
A woman giving birth to a half-blood will definitely become an outcast. Why do they bear unwanted children? Due to various reasons. Inability to have an abortion in time (how can a teenage girl kicked out of her home interrupt her pregnancy without any help and survive?); maternal instinct in some cases.  
The City is the capital of the state of Superiors; it is a megalopolis that occupies a giant territory. Superiors live there and visit their ancestral estates outside the City seldom and unwillingly. Besides Superiors, Inferiors also live in the City; they deal with servicing and provision of necessary facilities for Superiors. Another activity of Inferiors is prostitution.  
These Inferiors are brought from villages on purpose and they live in the City for generations. They are not orthodox like villagers but everything is individual; it is difficult to destroy traditions.  
Regarding Jade – any independent enterprising is out of question. Jade works in one of car repair workshops that belong to Crass. Jade is Crass’s property as well.  
The City is also populated by those who run there from villages, exiled or in search for better life; besides, there are half-bloods (sparse) and various aliens. The rest of the Planet is an agrarian territory controlled by Superiors, with distant clan villages of orthodox Inferiors. Villages barely contact each other, they are isolated and detached; every clan lives its own life, only exchanging young people for marriage from time to time. These facts as well as general lack of technological progress for Inferiors make the fight against the oppressive Race almost impossible.  
There is the third party (I would say – the second one), it was mentioned in the story as well – rebels. Rebels are people who left both their clans and the City. You can read about them in more details in the next chapter and later.  
Aste’s mother is an Inferior; she works as a chambermaid at the hotel. Once she was used by a drunken Superior to his heart’s content. It was not the first time for her and this Superior didn’t leave any negative impressions against the general background. He was not rough, and Aste’s mother didn’t submit to clan moral any more, she had been living in the City for a long time. When she knew she was pregnant, she kept the baby because she was alone and out of maternal instinct. She earns some money at the hotel and was capable of bringing up the child. As a result, Aste is a loved child (even though he grew up without much attendance and was educated in the street mostly). His mother is concerned about him but he is a grown-up now and has to feed himself. Even though his mother treats him from time to time if possible.  
Aste is quiet sexually experienced; village taboos are no concern for him. He has sex when he wants to, with those he likes. He doesn’t have a permanent partner. Till the situation with Crass he was able to protect himself from unwanted trespasses of Superiors (the encounter with the Colonel doesn’t count – Aste wanted it).


End file.
